Patchplay

~ Liz A

I coined the term patchplay early in my Jude-inspired stitching days. It was simply too much fun to call it patchwork. Today I went down a rabbit hole to find some of those early posts (links to the full posts: August 31, 2015, October 1, 2015, October 24, 2015) …

I still have that first nine patch, which is currently pinned to the corner of my stitching chair …

I’m pretty sure it will finally find a permanent home on the table cloth in progress. I can just see it stitched into a corner, can’t you?

These days I consider any stitching of one piece of cloth to another to be patchplay, including the current table cloth project. So it is that I’m happy to announce the count of art-inspired log cabin blocks has increased by yet two more.

This painting by Don was a study for a larger version commissioned by daughter Meliss …

And this watercolor came out of my parents’ Shelter Island house …

It’s a view from Hay Beach of an oyster factory on the North Fork of Long Island … which sent me on a memory jaunt while I stitched.

When I was a kid, we ate many many clams dug from the beaches and raked from the bogs on Shelter Island … sweet cherrystones eaten raw on the half shell, little necks baked into clams casino, massive quahogs cut into Manhattan-style chowder, and soft-shelled long necks gently steamed and then dipped into melted butter. Such briny goodness.

But I never ate an oyster as a kid. As I recall, my parents attributed the failure of the oyster beds on Long Island to the oyster drill. This article details more about the mid-century decline of the oyster industry and its resurgence in the 1980s, which is when I finally got my first taste … hence my love of this painting, which I always called The Oyster Factory.

I still love clams and oysters, but a recent post by erstwhile writing companion Maggie did give me pause …

No wonder my mom was always a stickler about where our clams came from!

10 thoughts on “Patchplay”

  1. I love reading about your childhood Liz. And…I had no idea there were so many different kinds of clams. I’ve still never tried raw oysters in the half shell although my daughter and her husband love them. I’m just too chicken. LOL

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    1. I learned to love raw seafood when I was too young to overthink it … although a vicious case of food poisoning from raw clams put me off for many years afterward, and even now I’m cautious

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  2. Liz~ My great niece likes oysters 🙂 These two cloths are so great at representing!
    I love the idea of the original 9 patch having a spot on the tablecloth.
    And I love your play on words…patchwork = patchplay = PATHwork/play.
    Carry on with all of your fun and goodness.

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    1. catching our dinner was a thing back then … whether clams or fish (snapper blues, blowfish, porgies), we had the freshest seafood possible … and handpicked wild raspberries (which we called wineberries) for dessert

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  4. Oh I do hope that original 9 path finds a home on the tablecloth! I love both of those paintings very much, an d have been sitting here wondering how the patch would look with different sequencing of the colours. I have been blurring my eyes and going if green in the centre, then the navy, then mauve and lots of light blue around the edges…my very own kind of patch play! Thanks for the fun.

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    1. I dare say I’d like to do a sequence of patches, each with the same four colors in different combinations (sounds like something I’ve seen on your blog)

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  5. LA – I love that you call it patchplay – it gives it the sense that it is yours and you are being the creative you – rather than being tied to rules!!! Go well. B

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